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The most important part of a weight loss regime is healthy eating. Any tom, dick and harry knows that the more you eat, the heavier you would be(not really muscle, but fat of course). How much more you can eat is relative to your own body! Different people of course would have different metabolic rate and different weight. In fact – the rule of thumb is of course – the heavier you are, the higher your base metabolic rate, or the amount of calories that is required for you to function.

So – for me for example, I require on average about 2600 calories(source: My body fat monitor, livestrong). So if I reduce my calorie intake by 100 calories everyday (less one teh tarik), in 30 days I would be able to loose about 1 pound!

Having said this, naturally – if you control your food, you should be able to lose weight relatively easy. On the contrary, if you loose track of your diet – you would gain weight easily too! Skipping teh tarik in your daily diet will not make a difference if you eat that lousy cake as dessert for dinner.

In addition to calories – we should also look at the nutritional composition. Even if you whack 2600 calories(that’s for me), but bulk of it is fat(yes.. those lousy cup cakes), you will not be able to lose weight. The body of course takes a hell lot longer to process fat – and as far as I know, fat is like the least priority to be used for energy! Sugar would be first, then protein then fat.

In summary, the key for good eating.. is … healthy, balanced and sufficient food.

Fitness Regime

So – now, we know that eating healthily will enable you to lose weight. So why workout?

For me:

1) Accelerate the weight loss – during and even after your workout!

2) Build muscle – to increase metabolic rate

3) Keeps the heart healthy(and other organs too)

4) Because it’s fun!

So now for example, a healthy diet(assuming it’s balanced), you get a deficit of 300 calories from your basic calorie requirements. Now say – you run 10k, you’ll probably spend another 1000 calories. So now, at the end of the day you have a deficit of 1300 calories. In a week, you’ll get 1300 X 3 = 3900 calories (assuming 3 times a week). 3900 calories is approximately about 1.2 pounds a week. So if you do this week in, week out, in a month, you’ll lose about 4.8 pounds or about 2 kg.

So in general – always couple healthy eating and good fitness regime.

Sufficient Rest and Sleep

Now – we have a good eating habit, healthy fitness regime – so what else for this jigsaw puzzle? Well – of course one should always ensure they rest and sleep well.

Rest and sleep will ensure the body recovers from all the battering and stress that we put to it during our daily life and fitness regime. We are organic – our muscles get “destroyed”, and we continuously rebuild back! And of course it gets rebuild stronger! If we don’t rest – go figure. In fact – sleep is a good form of rest!

In the past, we heard in the news about healthy individuals who died even though they are extremely fit (they run marathons!). And what the news said – these guys didn’t have enough rest (probably they ran too much, and lack of sleep).